Ultima IV: A Spicy Woman

Last time we talked I stupidly walked into some poisonous swamp, then died a pointless death as I wandered about, idly hoping the poison would eventually wear off.  Of course this did not happen, so as I died and prepared to reload (or whatever approximation this game has), I found myself being revived by Lord British in Britain Castle.  I briefly explored the castle, then saved and quit.

Since then I've talked to a few people about this game, and have heard that the game is actually an "open world" experience and contains no overarching story.  Very interesting.  So, I've still not read through the instruction booklet, which I've already paid for once (with my life) and I'm sure it will happen again.  Soon, even.  It was suggested that I skip this game in favor of some of the latter Ultima titles (even the Ultima Adventure games, which are also freebie GoG games), but for now I will ignore this advice.

So I exited the castle and decided to have a look around the town of Britain, which for me means talking to people and taking notes.  Whilst on this journey, I came across a spicy woman.

Needless to say the conversation went downhill from here

I'll be honest, I wasn't super ready to ask her what made her so spicy, but this was after encountering the drunk wandering around the building armed (the guy above the Armour sign).  Turns out her name is Pepper, and she is a fighting bard.  I wonder if the original description of this woman had something to do with the way she looked, or if this is something she goes around telling everyone she is.  Plus, is pepper spicy?  I mean, this Britannia so far seems rather old-worldy, so maybe they don't have anything outside of pepper.  Maybe paprika is spicy to them as well.  Imagine what one could do with a bottle of Cholula and a plate of tacos in this world.

Anyways, Pepper.  Alas, I did not ask her to "join," as I need to read the manual about the implications of this action.  The reference card suggests acquiring companions immediately, with up to seven allowed, but I want to read up on the classes a bit more first.  A fighting bard (Pepper's class) does sound useful, but all in good time.

I would like to propose something, even though it has likely been proposed before, either by the Ultima people themselves or the hordes of fans that exist.  While each of the Ultima games often share common elements (names, locations, and sometimes history), they are autonomous and not directly related or relatable from game to game, much like some of the details in the Space Odyssey series by Arthur C. Clarke aren't always exact.  Anyhoo:

Things to do:

• Research the classes to better (perhaps) prepare a team to venture forth to...  do something.
• Learn how I go up in experience, and if this will better prepare me.
• Read the frigging manual!  I imagine it will provide me with many answers to these basic questions.
• Once this is done I will work on getting a party together to start on those dungeons

On a separate note, I have been experimenting with different ways to run this game (and other DOS games) so that I can play it using the same save data whether I am at work or at home (basically anywhere I am at a computer).  My current solution is to run a Linux Mint 17 (Cinnamon) on a USB pendrive with Wine installed.  So far this is working well, but I may want a larger solution with support for Virtualbox in the future, perhaps using a USB hard drive (as opposed to a pendrive).  There is a portable Virtualbox, but who knows.  Any suggestions will be appreciated.

One other thing.  I find that sometimes I have difficulty playing this game, at times just starting the game, talking to a few people, then turning it off.  I may start playing two different games so that I don't get burned out on one genre (or decade).  I imagine when this game starts to grab ahold of me this will change, but we will cross that bridge later.

Ultima IV: A Fairly Good Start. Sort Of.

A badly cropped image of the Ultima IV intro screen

SLIGHT UPDATE: Before bed I happened across Ultima IV Gold, which is a fan update that fixes the long loads times and a score of other bugs for the original C64 release.  While this kind of sounds cool (plus I really like the C64), I really feel the need to commit to one platform, which will be the IBM port.  If anyone has any compelling arguments as to why I should go for the C64 Gold fix, I would love to hear about it.

So after installing the GoG game through Wine (I use Linux), I was greeted by the DOSbox emulator.  Also, there was silence, outside of the burping/flatulent sound from the PC beeper.   I should have been ready for that, as I am not completely without historical knowledge of the PC (and I did watch some intro videos).  Okay, I'm done with the sound thing, I promise.

I really like the whole intro, how the Avatar appears from the moongate, wages a battle,  takes over a ship, then proceeds to blow up a bunch of monsters with it.  Seems contrary to what I've heard about this game, but still cool.  What I'm trying to do is to put myself in the mind of someone playing this game back in '85.  So while I was kind of disappointed for reasons mentioned in the second paragraph, the whole intro really kind of drew me in.  Actually getting pretty stoked to play this game.

Okay, before I begin I have one more tiny tangent.  Moongates, right?  According to the reference card the appearance and destination of the moongates have to do with the time and phase of the moon, which is something I've seen before.  See, back in 1998 I purchased both Ultima Online and the Prima strategy guide, which was about six months to a year before I actually had a computer to play it on.  I purchased it based solely on an article in a magazine.  Because of this I spent a great deal of time pouring over the strategy guide in preparation for playing the game, some of which happened to do with traveling using moongates.  Now when I finally got to play the game I was disappointed to learn that moongate travel has nothing to do with time or moon phase, but rather running through it without getting ganked by another player (hopefully).  Okay, tangent over.

So my first hour in game was rather uneventful.  After answering questions to the gypsy woman I ended up with a tinker.  The game started me outside of the city of Minoc (due to my class?).  I blundered around and came to terms with the controls, talking to people here and there.  While the keywords of the conversation are not highlighted, I believe this is the same conversation mechanic from The Real Texas, which if I understand borrowed it (in turn) from Ultima VI.  I've also been taking notes, which the manual recommended.  So far this is mostly about the people I meet, such as this:

• Mike Ward, a ranger, says that the rune of the Skara Brae (his home town) is missing.  He is also trying to get a room for some reason, but I don't know how to help him with this (might not be able to).  Join?

I thought it seemed random that a ranger would be named, Mike Ward.  Something to expect more of later on?  Another:

• Gimble is going to die soon from a tsetse "byte."  I originally thought the spelling was due to the use of old English, but this does not appear to be so.  A pun, perhaps?

I ended up spending ten minutes reading up on tsetse flies from a website that appears to be written for English speaking Africans and people living in tsetse infested areas.

I learned something important today.  Remember that "culture" shock I mentioned when I first started this?  How my console RPG upbringing hasn't prepared me?  Today, while wandering around Minoc looking for NPCs to talk to I stepped on some sort of poison ground (poison swamp?), which poisoned me, shortly after which I died while looking for some soft of cure.  I think I was a bit disappointed that it didn't wear off on its own, but whatever.  Lesson learned.

After I died I expected to have to start over again, but instead I awoke in the court of Lord British.  I think I will be looking over that map after all.

I think that is enough for now.  Until next time.